Hoffman: The Beatles as they were meant to be seen

The Beatles as they were meant to be seen

Published 5:30 am, Tuesday, September 8, 2009

When Jonathan Polk was growing up, he loved the Beatles. His favorite memories were rushing home with each new Beatles album, putting it on the stereo and staring at the photo on the front and reading the back while he listened to the songs.

Beatles albums were beautiful. From the simplicity of Meet the Beatles with the half-shadowed faces of John, Paul, George and Ringo, to the Revolver collage to the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band collection of characters, to the pure White Album to the four of them walking across Abbey Road, Beatles albums were the art of the day.

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For the past two years, Polk, former chief operating officer of Capitol Records, worked on compiling and restoring all the artwork that appeared on the fronts and backs — and sometimes inside — Beatles albums.

He put them together, first time it's been done, in a beautifully presented, 200-page book, The Beatles Box of Vision.

If you're a Beatles fan — and this is a good time to be one — Box of Vision will keep your eyes full as you listen to the Beatles' remastered CDs coming out Wednesday. TheBeatles: Rock Band comes out the same day, too.

Box of Vision has three parts inside a beautiful linen-covered case. There's the book of album art, a Beatles “catalography” listing all the songs on both their American and British albums, and an empty storage book for you to keep all 32 CDs of the Beatles core releases.

“If you are a big fan like I am, you will surprise yourself with how so many of the images connect with memories,” Polk said.

“I can't look at one of these LPs without being transported back to my childhood, remembering the first time I heard the tracks.”

Maybe it's just me, but I'm not really interested in the remastered CDs. I still listen to the original LPs and CDs. That's how I heard them the first time, and that's how I think they should sound.

So strumming through Box of Vision was a real treat.

This is the actual art from the Beatles albums, the way the Beatles wanted us to see them — not reduced to baseball-card size and stuck behind hard plastic on a CD.

I asked Polk, what does Box of Vision mean? It's not from anything the Beatles did.

“‘Box of Vision' comes from a song by Tom Russell,” Polk said. “The gist of the song is a father wishing he could give his child a box with all the things he would like her to experience in her life. I thought it was a good fit as I had envisioned this as a way to give a young fan the context to appreciate the history and chronology of the Beatles catalog, and what they were able to accomplish, in a much deeper way than as simply a bunch of hit songs.”

Wow, before I got to speak with Polk, I did just that. I sat with my son and we looked at all the Beatles album covers in Box of Vision, and I told him what each album meant for fans.

He endured this for 15 minutes before I got the “Let me out of here” look.

I'll have better luck with the Beatles video game. I'm going to get him one way or another, though.

Box of Vision is not an unauthorized Beatles ripoff. It is Beatles-approved and blessed, not so easy to get done.

“This is the first time all of that artwork has been collected together in one book,” Polk said, “as if you have all of the LPs on your lap, and all of these images have been newly restored as pristine art prints. If you could watch as many Beatles fans as I have pour over this book at Beatles conventions here and in Europe, you would see that fans who grew up with the Beatles consider the LP artwork a significant part of the body of work, and still connect with it on a deep emotional level. I've actually seen fans cry as they look through it.”